Prior ice making units in general make relatively large amounts of ice, only a portion of which is used at any one time. The unused portion is kept in an accessible storage bin as commonly found in hallways and refreshment areas of hotels, motels and the like. Since only a portion of the accumulated ice is taken out of such storage bins by a succession of users, contamination of the remaining ice may occur through personal contact or distribution of a contaminant during removal of the desired smaller quantity of ice. Such readily accessible bins are often unsecured and easily opened, and therefore there also is a risk of the ice being contaminated by someone intentionally dumping trash or chemicals into the accumulated ice. There is therefore a need for an ice maker of inexpensive construction for providing sanitary batches of ice cubes for use in motel rooms, hotel rooms and the like.
It has been suggested in the past to employ a bag of flexible material for molding liquid water into ice cubes, such as the bags suggested by U.S. Pat. No. 2,964,920 wherein a compartmented mold compresses the flexible walls of a bag into the shape of the ice cubes desired, or the bags suggested by U.S. Pat. No. 4,587,810 wherein the bag is provided with individual compartments and interconnecting passageways by heat welding together two flexible sheets of heat weldable material. The entire contents of both of these patents are incorporated expressly herein by reference. Unfortunately, compartmented molds of the type suggested by U.S. Pat. No. 2,964,920 and compartmented bags of the type suggested by U.S. Pat. No. 4,587,810 provide relatively slow rates of heat transfer and have not found wide utilization.
An ice maker for motel and hotel room applications also needs to be of a compact and durable construction and to have relatively small physical dimensions to facilitate mounting the unit on counters or within cabinets of the type generally found in motel and hotel rooms. Because ice makers of such small dimensions can make only small amounts of ice at one time, an ice maker construction capable of rapidly freezing liquid water is highly desirable.